7/23/2010 @ 6:00AM

Billionaire Marc Benioff: I'm Sold

Marc and Lynne Benioff didn’t start out planning to give away $100 million to fund the construction of a new children’s hospital at the University of California, San Francisco. Benioff is the billionaire founder and chief executive of software company Salesforce.com. He and his wife had previously given away some $20 million, and had that total in mind for the hospital.

Then Mark Laret, CEO of the UCSF Medical Center made a clever move, though he didn’t realize it at the time. He had Benioff agree to introduce him to other billionaires, hoping that each would donate $100 million. Benioff took it a step further, and signed up to meet with Laret and potential donors.

Benioff is a natural salesman who is known for turning futuristic software ideas into digestible sound bites. Early on he dubbed
Salesforce.com’s
Web software “MyYahoo meets Siebel,” and these days talks about his latest product push, called Chatter, as Facebook for businesses.

He’s exactly the kind of guy that could convince someone to part with $100 million.

The duo met with eight or so billionaires. “It helps to hear the pitch from another billionaire,” says Laret. Some gave smaller amounts than $100 million, but the biggest score ended up being Benioff.

After breakfast with an entrepreneur-turned-billionaire at the Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Benioff had upsold himself. “I came home and told Lynne we should step up,” recalls Benioff. “In trying to convince others, I convinced myself.”

The couple then began researching medical philanthropy, calling on others who have funded hospitals, including Michael Dell and his wife Susan , and Alan Hassenfeld (who sits on the Salesforce.com board) and his wife Vivien. The Benioffs understood the benefits of funding a children’s hospital. They wanted to know the risks.

“In every case, they said that medical philanthropy was the best [thing] they’d ever done,” says Benioff. He and his wife had previously given to orphanages, monasteries and schools. Results were mixed, and sometimes felt unproductive.

After a few months, Benioff called Laret to relay the news. Says Laret: “I didn’t intend those meetings with other billionaires to sell Marc, but it just worked out that way.”

Benioff is self-made and, at 45, still young. He intends give away even more. “I don’t like my ranking on the Forbes 400 list. I don’t understand the value of maintaining that level of wealth. It’s not helping anyone, certainly not me.”

To read more of Victoria Barret’s stories, click here. Contact her at vbarret@forbes.com. Follow her on Twitter: @VictoriaBarret.